Be Careful What You Wish For...

Well, two months after arriving here (67 days if you count when the movers took our stuff away from our house in VA) our stuff finally arrived on August 31!!  It is like night and day in here.  On Thursday, August 30, I had the Housing Office take away our lovely loaner furniture,  They could have done it the same day as the movers but I thought it would be too stressful since the movers were scheduled for 9am (they actually arrived at 8:48am) and I also had to get Leah to school and Aaron to drop-in day care.  Also, I wanted to clean the floors before everything arrived and that was a good call on my part as the kids (Leah especially) eat like pigs.  As ugly as that loaner furniture was, I was really thankful after it was gone and I saw what life would have been like with folding chairs and air mattresses for two months.

Aaron eating lunch in our living room.

Leah's bedroom.

While it has been liberating in a way moving here and not owning a car (at the time) or a house and not having 95% of your possesions, I'm not ready to live in such a spartan existence just yet.  But as I wrote, you have to be careful for what you wish for because now my house is the opposite of spartan!  So on Friday August 31 the Japanese movers arrived.  There were, as you might imagine, quite organized, quiet, polite and efficient.  The even took their shoes off before entering my apartment!

The movers opening the crates with our furniture and boxes.

The movers unloaded in stages using teams of people since we live on the third floor of an apartment building.  They moved big batches of stuff from the truck to the lobby and then from the lobby to the hall outside our apartment.  Two guys (mostly) then moved everything from the hall into our apartment.  After everything was moved in, they unpacked and put together furniture.
 

I slept on the couch for a few days.

As part of their contract with the military, all the movers (not just in Japan) are required to unpack all the boxes and take away the packing material for you, if you request.  That is what I have always done in the past but since our place is so small, I was afraid there wouldn't be anywhere to work or function if I did that so I had them leave the kitchen stuff and a couple other boxes worth of stuff in their boxes. 

We ate off of paper plates for a few days.

I usually follow the Vanessa Unpacking Plan of tackling the kitchen first but I knew I had to do the kids' rooms first so they would play with their stuff and let me work.  If Matt were here I would have just made him take the kids out on the weekend so I could unpack but since that was not possible, I had to just do what I thought would work.  While it took me the whole Labor Day weekend to get through the kitchen because I had to do it in small batches of time, it only took about an hour for the kids to "unpack" all the toys in their rooms. 

Aaron's room.

Leah's room.

The following week I worked on unpacking some more until I got the place functional. On Friday I put Aaron in daycare for the day while Leah was at school so I could work on our storage unit across the hall.  Again, it might seem like that shouldn't be a top priority but it is definitely not something I can do with the kids around and while the rest of the house is awash with stuff, it is still functional; the storage unit was not.  It took me almost three hours and afterward I was completely wet with sweat, but I am happy with the results.  (Imagine taking out everything that is in your garage and then putting it back in a different way during the middle of summer for three hours and that's how I felt.)

Storage (before) #1

Storage (before) #2

Storage (after) #1

Storage (after) #2

After that Friday, I caught a cold.  It's not surprising considering the week I had when the movers came.  That same week was the first week of school, the first week of soccer and I had bought and registered a car.  The cold was thankfully mild but it was enough to put me on the couch all weekend and take the wind out of my sails.  Once the place is functional if you lose momentum, it's hard to not slip back into life.  So I am not as nearly as far as I would have hoped to be by now, and I hadn't been blogging because I felt guilty doing that instead of unpacking but by now I figured, what difference does it make?  So my new goal is to get all moved in by October so we can decorate the apartment for Halloween.  At least I will have no problems getting out my Halloween bins from my storage closet.  :-)